Beat cop’s challenges demoralize, then inspire him

Raleigh City Police Officer Robert Wagner, formerly of New Bern, acted in and produced a short film about the interactions between a police officer and a gang member. The officer faces a crisis of faith and is able to change his life and the gang members life for the better

Hannah Chapman/Contributed photo

By Bill Hand, Sun Journal Staff

Published: Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 04:58 PM.

RALEIGH — He fights crime on his weekdays and shoots movies on weekends.

Well, sort of.

Raleigh City Police Officer Robert Wagner is striving to put the story of his spiritual journey of life on film. Recently he held the first screening of a 22-minute short of that project for the press, and the actors and production crew who have helped him bring the project this far.

I remember Wagner from his New Bern days. He spent much of his youth here and I worked with his father for a time, overseeing the youth program at Faith United Methodist Church where he was active.

Wagner spent much of his youth in New Bern. He spent one year on the line of scrimmage with his fellow New Bern Bears, and graduated from New Bern High School in 2002. For a few years he worked a management job at Walmart before moving to Raleigh, where he ultimately signed on to become one of the city’s “finest.”

He took a strong liking to film — a possible career he pursued for a number of years, acting and directing in private projects with New Bern’s small but intense film community. At what time he even played with the idea of a sitcom about a fast food restaurant, shooting an initial episode.

Wagner found Christianity to suit him and made a commitment of faith, himself.

RALEIGH — He fights crime on his weekdays and shoots movies on weekends.

Well, sort of.

Raleigh City Police Officer Robert Wagner is striving to put the story of his spiritual journey of life on film. Recently he held the first screening of a 22-minute short of that project for the press, and the actors and production crew who have helped him bring the project this far.

I remember Wagner from his New Bern days. He spent much of his youth here and I worked with his father for a time, overseeing the youth program at Faith United Methodist Church where he was active.

Wagner spent much of his youth in New Bern. He spent one year on the line of scrimmage with his fellow New Bern Bears, and graduated from New Bern High School in 2002. For a few years he worked a management job at Walmart before moving to Raleigh, where he ultimately signed on to become one of the city’s “finest.”

He took a strong liking to film — a possible career he pursued for a number of years, acting and directing in private projects with New Bern’s small but intense film community. At what time he even played with the idea of a sitcom about a fast food restaurant, shooting an initial episode.

Wagner found Christianity to suit him and made a commitment of faith, himself.

But when he took a beat in an inner city hell as a cop in Raleigh, however, he found himself in a crisis of faith.

He’d taken the job to help people, he said, but he found himself in a community where no one seemed to want help — where drugs and gangs were rampant and he seemed only to be hated.

At the same time, Wagner was going through serious health issues with his young daughter, Alayna.

He said his crisis piqued when a woman dropped a dying child in his arms, screaming at him to do something. People in the community stood around watching, he recalled, not even seeming to care.

It was at that point that Wagner re-evaluated his life and his faith, determining that his calling was to show unconditional love to everyone, no matter their station in life or their lifestyle, and not worry if the love was never returned.

His philosophy has reaped huge rewards, he said, with a new-found sense of purpose and mission. The community has responded as well and he has sensed a growing sense of respect from the people on his beat.

Wagner and his wife, Krystyl, began to think of new ways to reach out to the community, and to tell his tale, he said. Drawing on his love of filmmaking, he started thinking of a story line to tell in a film, inventing characters and situations, but using actual experiences from his own and others’ lives to tell a sort of spiritual autobiography of his life as an inner city cop.

It tells the story of an officer named Taylor and his interaction with a gang member named Dae’Quann. Taylor, like Wagner, faces a crisis of faith and, coming to resolution with God, is instrumental in helping Dae’Quann to also change his life for the better.

In 2012 he and I met over several weeks where I took his story and a number of interviews I did with him, and turned them into a screenplay.

Since that time Wagner has developed his film, titled “Bragg N East,” and named after a prominent intersection in the South Park section of Raleigh where it takes place. He and Krystyl worked to find directors, editors, a cinematographer and actors — both inside and outside the South Park community — to take part in filming the 22-minute short, which Wagner adapted from the long script.

He set up Within A Yard Ministry to oversee the project, taking the name from a quote by the turn-of-the-century missionary C. T. Studd, who wrote of opening a rescue shop “within a yard of hell.” The point, Wagner said, is not just to make a movie but, more importantly, to form an outreach to the South Park community.

Wagner pointed out that gangs spread across the nation to a great degree through film and other media, where troubled youth see gangs recreated in shows and movies.

He added that filming in South Park has brought a lot of gang members out to watch and help, drawn by their own love of film. “What better way to attack [gang lifestyles] than to use it’s own weapon, media?” he asked. “We’ve seen it first hand that they’re actually coming out, getting involved,” he said.

He said that the community support for the filming, which took place last December, “was just awesome.”

Wagner also has had support from several law enforcement and emergency management groups. The Capital Special Police chief appears in the short, as does the Wake County Sheriff’s Department SWAT Team. The opening was filmed at a controlled house fire in South Park with

Wagner played Officer Taylor and also produced, shooting the short over three days, not including days when pick-up shots were done. The total budget for the short, he said, is $15,000.

The short will be entered in festivals and used to raise funds for the final project which could either be a feature film or possibly even a series. “It gives us something we can actually show,” he said. “It’s taking our idea from paper and actually seeing something from it.”

He has gotten interest from several people within the Hollywood scene but, he said, including producers and actors whose work is well-known.

He is reluctant to name those people as long as he is negotiating with them, but he hopes to draw some in to take creative part or work as producers with his project.

He hopes to see the show become a series, in which he could hire local people from the inner city to do much of the work. “It would create a working community versus a community that has crime and drug sales and prostitution,” he said.

While there is a strong Christian element to his film, Wagner says he believes it can attract a larger audience. “You can look at it, this being a Christian movie,” he agreed. “But it’s more about one person’s individual faith. It’s about people. It isn’t preaching at you all the way through.”